The Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 features the project ‘Utopian Infrastructure: The Campesino Basketball Court’. The pavilion aims to invite dialogue and play to engage in conversations about the topics that concern the world of architecture in relation to various aspects of social, cultural, and political life. The pavilion had an investment of 9,059,600 pesos.
The inaugural ceremony was attended by Felicitas Vázquez Islas, the municipal president of Panotla, and Nancy Cortés Vázquez, the mayor of Amaxac de Guerrero in the state of Tlaxcala. Additionally, there was a performance of the Catrines de los Huehues Dance, a popular dance, at the Biennale to bring life to this basketball court, much like in any celebration that finds its roots in ritual, as a form of decolonization and a profound sense of community.
The campesino court is that place where the present is the root of the future. That is why inhabiting it, in all possible forms, is part of the game of our social, economic, bioethical, and biopolitical life.
The project features the kiosk design by Fabien Cappello; photography by Brian Cross, Eunice Adorno and Jorge Santiago; the film ‘Catârsis’ by Antonio Turok, edited by Pablo Escoto Luna and Mariana Botey; graphic art presented with works by Dr. Lakra, Francisco Taka Fernández, and Karla Kaplun. It also features the collaboration of Radio Nopal and ‘La manta de curación’, created by the ecological center Milpa Urbana and the Tanivet Embroidering Ants collectives, a poem by Delmar Penka, as well as the graphic design of e+e, among other collaborators.
The Mexican Pavilion will be open to the public from May 20 to November 26 at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023.
